Schemepower

Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston examines the making of presidential candidate Donald Trump - from his business background extracting profit from shaky enterprises and alliances with organized crime, to his skill at manipulating a largely uncritical, law-suit averse press - and explains why Trump's successes, in business and on the campaign trail, reveal critical failures in American politics, media and public discourse.

Jacobin Managing Editor Nicole Aschoff examines the class project behind decades of declines in autoworker wages and working class power in general - rejecting the 'inevitability' of loss under globalization and instead pointing towards a set of industrial and political decisions made by politicians, companies and unions - and points to a larger failing of the left to provide an inclusive project based on class solidarity across industries, from the plant floor, to the classroom, to the call center.

Live from a restaurant kitchen somewhere in Petropolis, Brian Mier reports on what the Western media is missing about Brazil, Rio and the Olympic games - from the new illegal construction and commercial laws that made the games possible, to the continued nation-wide protests against the legislative coup that removed elected president Dilma Rousseff from power - and explains why, despite all the legal and economic bullshit, he was touched by the opening ceremonies.

Live from Cairo, political economist Amr Adly examines the roots of Egypt's current political and economic dilemma - contractions in global trade and mismanagement of the national economy weaken the President Sisi's influence over the public sector, a group whose support the regime needs most to enact economic reforms, but who stand to lose the most from those reforms - and explains why expanding the political sphere may divert a worsening crisis.

The Hopleaf's Michael Roper explains how American cider is hitting the craft boom (from an increased awareness of locality and craftmanship, to the inevitable big brands jumping in on the trend) and explores two big financial stories in the beer world - investors removing craft brew founders from their companies, and the SAB/Miller/Coors/AB/Inbev consolidation that will soon cover 71% of the US beer market.

In a Moment of Truth from the other side of the velvet rope, Jeff Dorchen learns about Hollywood's "top film" gender gap from an exquisitely lit PSA, considers the gap between "top films" and what artists should be working towards, leaks a photo of Saul Rubinek buying toilet paper, and dives into a memo from the post-production supervisor to the sound department on an unreleased new version of David Lynch's 1984 movie, Dune.